WD will release 2.5-inch SATA and PATA and a 1.8" Micro SATA that have read speeds up to 100MB/s and write speeds up to 80MB/s, with storage capacities up to 120GB.

The SSDs are being targeted for the enterprise market, though it's likely WD will release SSDs designed more for home PC users. Pricing and availability remain unknown for the SiliconDrive III line.

"SiliconDrive III is the first example of how WD plans to productize solid state technology developed by SiliconSystems," WD SSD business unit vice president Michael Hajeck said in a statement. "The launch of SiliconDrive III will also enable WD to leverage its global sales and distribution channels to accelerate the adoption of SSD technology beyond SiliconSystems' traditional embedded systems OEM customer base into data streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data center media appliances."

SSDs remain more expensive than traditional hard disk drives, but are growing in popularity as the storage capacity and price per gigabyte continues to drop. The lack of moving parts means they are more stable and also run cooler than regular HDDs, which make them ideal in the data center.

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Not only that, Western digital are perhaps one of the top 3 best HDD producers for performance. Hopefully the legacy of the raptor will follow WD into their SSDs. We need a new model to join intel and OCZ's top of the line.

I think I just wet myself thinking about a Raptor SSD. Of course, I think the only way they will be able to compete will be a PCIe device like OCZ and Patriot (and others I'm sure) are making. SATA is just too slow nowadays for top o'the line.